Mouths bloodied purple, fingers antennae
trembling for the touch of hidden fruit –
foragers scouring the hinterland,
eyes skinned for dark swell of berry.
Our days are long, and battle-scarred
with brambling. Brummels lade our nights;
all our tomorrows are a hooked tunnel
of bummelkites. We move hungrily
among edges, hunting for certainties:
scavengers off a darkened street,
hardened hierophants
in the sacred lore of blackberries.
We love beck-sides, and derelict places
where branches scramble out of sight –
behind nettles, under hawthorns, sidling
through bracken. We are long-armed
with reaching for the woody stems
that clamber at an immense height.
But most of all we love the brambles
arching spindly over walls in ginnels –
stray offerings from untidy ends of gardens,
bending with plump black weight.
Lucy Newlyn, from Ginnel